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It took Mika Brzezinski decades to work up the courage to ask for a raise. The Morning Joe host says she didn’t know her own value in the workplace for many years—but now that she does, she’s sharing what she learned about self-advocacy with the next generation of women in Earn It! Know Your Value and Grow Your Career, in Your 20s and Beyond, a new book co-authored with Know Your Value millennial contributor Daniela Pierre-Bravo.

With the persistent gender wage gap in mind, we asked Brzezinski and Pierre-Bravo to compare their first experiences with getting a raise at work to get a small glimpse at what—if anything—might have changed in the cultural conversation around women’s salaries over the past few decades.

Their main takeaways? Find a support system at work and look for ways to build each other up. When asking for a raise, keep the focus on what you bring to the table instead of what others might be earning. Get comfortable with talking about money, because you’ll need to keep the conversation going. And above all, keep asking until your employer gives you the salary you deserve—or find another employer who will.

Read on for Brzezinski and Pierre-Bravo’s accounts of their first real raises.

Mika Brzezinski

I’ve built an entire brand dedicated to showing women how to communicate and advocate for themselves effectively to get paid what they’re worth.

This passion is rooted in my own experience. It took me way too long to understand my value and translate that into dollars. My first real raise wasn’t until I was 40. Practically every bump in salary I’d received up until that point had been the marginal standard yearly increase as I went through stints of being an anchor and reporter in Hartford. My big break—my huge step up—was when I was hired as a freelancer with no maternity leave, working at the CBS network overnights, no benefits or time off. After the cost of childcare, I barely broke even when I got my paycheck every two weeks.

Every time I signed deals, I got the basic 4 percent increase. And when they told me there was no money, I took that at face value. OK, well thank you so much for having me! I am just so lucky to be here. I never said, “Wait a minute, I need more—since I’m working on all five of your main broadcasts.”

I never articulated all the round-the-clock work I was doing, working away on the night shifts. I never said, “I’m not being paid my value.” I never articulated what it was I brought to the table.

The one time I hit it big was short lived. I got the job as weekend anchor at CBS Evening News and as a 60 Minutes contributor and was making $500K. I was blown away. I thought, I’ve finally arrived. I’m doing what I love to do, and I have two beautiful kids. I am making an amazing salary. I have made it as a woman.

Six months later, I got fired. It all went away in a flash, and I was out of work for more than a year.

I had to get back to work somehow, some way. I went from that incredible salary that I held for only six months, to working freelance and making a couple hundred dollars a day—earning a day-rate at MSNBC. Let’s just say I took a huge step back to get back in.

That was the one thing I did that served me well. Women are great at knowing when their stock is down, being scrappy and how to start all over again when they fall down—we’re hard-wired to do that part well. That job at MSNBC wasn’t full-time and I was barely breaking even compared to the overnight shift I had way earlier in my career.

But then, I missed the moment again at the onset of Morning Joe. I, along with Joe and our executive producer, built the show together. Then when Willie Geist jumped on board, we found our flow and the show took off in a big way.

And what happened when it was time to sign contracts? I signed the lowest one out of everybody. Mine wasn’t just lower, it was less than a quarter of what some of our main guys were making. I don’t even want to go into the numbers; it’s too painful to revisit that. The figures were so far apart.

But with the help of Joe, Willie and Chris, our former executive producer, I found a support group where we were all transparent about what was going on. They knew the show was nothing without me and became my allies.

We were in such an amazing moment in the progression of the show, and here I was missing it, not being able to recognize the amazing press we were getting and believing that I had a big part in it.

So over the course of a year, I went into Phil Griffin’s office—the president of the network—with multiple failed attempts to get paid what I was worth. The first time I went in to ask for a raise, I played the victim—feeling sorry for myself about the disparity.

Rightly so, Phil said, “I’m sorry, you signed a contract.” And there I was, expecting that feeling sorry for myself would act as an overwhelming incentive for him to give me more money. No chance. Where was the information about what I bring to the table? Nowhere. I was too busy crying and feeling like the victim.

The second time I went to see him, I complained about how I wasn’t able to afford the job: childcare, clothing, taking care of my parents, etc. I made that Phil’s problem—but it wasn’t his to fix! Business is NOT personal.

The third time I went in angry thinking, I’m going to put these feelings into action and I’m going to act like Joe. I went in there and was poking Phil’s chest and dropping F bombs. Phil thought I’d totally lost it. I was acting crazy.

The last time I went in, I finally articulated the only thing that mattered. I voiced with absolute clarity what it was I brought to the table and said: “There is no Morning Joe without Morning Mika, and tomorrow morning you’re going to experience what that feels like unless we fix this.”

It was authentic, it was clear, and it saved time. I had data ready to go. And I was ready to walk—don’t do this unless you are.

I finally got that raise. And the next day, I sat down on the set and it felt different. When I got my paycheck and saw how much higher and more in line with my colleagues it was, I got better on the air; my questions got crisper, my delivery became more exact, and my eye contact was fierce. I owned the job when I got paid my worth. I was officially a part of an incredible team. I felt like I was meant to be there and I got better. You don’t get better being the nice guy getting paid less, you get worse. You set yourself up to fail when you’re not being paid your worth.

I learned that too late, but better late than never! That exactly that’s why I created Know Your Value—so you can step up for yourself sooner. Don’t miss the moment. Go to KnowYourValue.com and start now.

Daniela Pierra-Bravo

Asking for your first raise is never easy. It’s uncomfortable, awkward and confusing.

As you’re starting out in the workplace, we all know the importance and benefit of being hard workers, willing to work long hours and showing you are eager to be there and take on more work. But when does showing you’re willing to do any part of the job and saying yes to everything translate into advancing and getting more money?

It’s easy to get stuck doing the menial and administrative work, especially if you’re a young woman. It’s partly because we’re good at it, but it’s also an indicator we need to be more vocal about our own advancement; to get comfortable owning our big-picture ideas, raising our hands, advocating for ourselves and more importantly, knowing the timing of your ask to get to the next step.

My first promotion came about two years into my first job as a production coordinator for Morning Joe. I’d get to the studio set at 4 a.m. and work late into the evenings. I was working around the clock and on weekends.

During that time, I racked up a lot of overtime. I became the go-to. It was a role that gave me leverage to be able to point to a lot of different examples of the value I brought to my job, but it could have easily been a role where I could have missed my chance to advance.

When it came for a promotion, I was confident I had what it took to get to the next step. But did I know how to translate that into the money I deserved? I wasn’t sure. I was just thankful to get a chance to be there and get to the next step.

So when they offered me a higher role with a lower salary than I had been making for the first two years, I was conflicted. Should I take the higher role and forgo the income I had been making?

What I realized is that by doing that, I wouldn’t just be jeopardizing my earning potential for the next few years; it would snowball and exacerbate my salary negotiations for years to come. Studies show that women start out earning at a lower rate than their male counterparts and rarely catch up. We all have a duty to advocate for ourselves and ask for more and that plays into the overall wage gap as a whole in a big way.

So I pushed back. I decided to take a stand by coming back with a number that at least put me in line with the salary I had been paid, with overtime, for the two years prior. My responsibilities would only be getting more complex and demanding. I needed the money to match it.

And it wasn’t easy, it took a few sit-downs with my boss, and even called for me to look elsewhere as a backup choice—to give me the option to walk if the money wasn’t in line with my ask.

But what I learned through that exercise is that it is so important to build leverage. Work hard and take on as much as you can starting out, but look out for that window to advance before doing too much no longer brings value back.

The bottom-line problem from the start was that I wasn’t comfortable talking about money. The idea of asking someone else to agree to a number that translated into my worth felt uncomfortable. As if it was a personal reflection of who I was as a person.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned from working with Mika Brzezinski and collaborating on Earn It! is that business is NOT personal. It shouldn’t be.

My first real raise wasn’t until I was paid for the book I co-authored with Mika; which, transparently, was over half of what I made in a year at my day job.

Yet even when I received the money for co-authoring, there was something about it that also made me uneasy—like I wasn’t supposed to be making that much more on top of my salary. As if the added $50K I made from the book would be a reason for not being able to ask for more at my current job. As I write this, I realize how backwards that sounds, especially since they are two completely different roles independent of each other. But the feelings are still there, and it translates into unnecessary mental clutter. Instead, I needed to own my value. And this is exactly why the book is so needed for my generation and the next.

Name one guy who would struggle with this; you can’t. Mika says this is the heart of the problem: “These feelings of guilt or debating the fairness of our value in our minds is a huge problem for women. We actually negotiate against ourselves. Men simply do not do that. For God’s sake, take the money and step up because you know you deserve it. Stop talking about it. Stop overthinking it. Step up and move forward.”

Women entering the workforce and in their first few jobs are working in a playing field that is far more advantageous than it was for other generations. My first raise was in my mid-20s, whereas Mika’s didn’t come until she was 40. Young women are understanding at an earlier age that they have to get comfortable asking for their worth. And employers are getting used to hearing it.

The call to action for young women is to embrace asking for the appropriate compensation when the time comes. We have to acknowledge the facets of the labor we do and not be ashamed of talking about money—because we can’t talk about our value if we can’t talk about the money that comes with it.

AMG/Parade Digital

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